Michael Sam Tells Oprah Gay NFL Players ‘Thankful’

Michael Sam claims that several gay NFL players reached out to him in the wake of him becoming an upfront homosexual.

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“Very few reached out to me and pretty much just told me their gratitude and how thankful they were that I had the courage,” Sam tells Oprah Winfrey in their discussion airing on Saturday night. “They wished that they had the courage to come out.”

The trailer for the interview, which follows the Oprah Winfrey Network’s documentary on the openly-gay athlete, teases whether the defensive end drafted by the St. Louis Rams and also cut later in the season by the Dallas Cowboys believes his ability or his sexuality led to his ouster from the NFL. Sam posted terrible numbers at the NFL combine, where he ran a 4.9 40-yard dash, bench pressed 225 pounds just 17 times, and jumped a lead-legged 25-1/2 inches on the vertical leap. But on the field in the preseason he recorded three sacks, showing that he can chase a quarterback down at an elite level.

“There’s a lot of us out there,” Sam tells Winfrey. “I’m not the only one. I’m just the only one who is open.”